book 3 vampire chronicals

1. I'M THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. REMEMBER ME? THE vampire who became a super rock star, the one who
wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair and the gray eyes, and the insatiable desire for
visibility and fame? You remember. I wanted to be a symbol of evil in a shining century that didn't have any
place for the literal evil that I am. I even figured I'd do some good in that fashion-playing the devil on the
painted stage.
And I was off to a good start when we talked last. I'd just made my debut in San Francisco-first "live concert"
for me and my mortal band. Our album was a huge success. My autobiography was doing respectably with
both the dead and the undead.
Then something utterly unforeseen took place. Well, at least I hadn't seen it coming. And when I left you, I
was hanging from the proverbial cliff, you might say.
Well, it's all over now-what followed. I've survived, obviously. I wouldn't be talking to you if I hadn't. And the
cosmic dust has finally settled; and the small rift in the world's fabric of rational beliefs has been mended, or
at least closed.
I'm a little sadder for all of it, and a little meaner and a little more conscientious as well. I'm also infinitely
more powerful, though the human in me is closer to the surface than ever-an anguished and hungry being
who both loves and detests this invincible immortal shell in which I'm locked.
The blood thirst? Insatiable, though physically I have never needed the blood less. Possibly I could exist
now without it altogether. But the lust I feel for everything that walks tells me that this will never be put to the
test.
You know, it was never merely the need for the blood anyway, though the blood is all things sensual that a
creature could desire; it's the intimacy of that moment-drinking, killing-the great heart-to-heart dance that
takes place as the victim weakens and I feel myself expanding, swallowing the death which, for a split
second, blazes as large as the life.
That's deceptive, however. No death can be as large as a life. And that's why I keep taking life, isn't it? And
I'm as far from salvation now as I could ever get. The fact that I know it only makes it worse.
Of course I can still pass for human; all of us can, in one way or another, no matter how old we are. Collar
up, hat down, dark glasses, hands in pockets-it usually does the trick. I like slim leather jackets and tight
jeans for this disguise now, and a pair of plain black boots that are good for walking on any terrain. But now
and then I wear the fancier silks which people like in these southern climes where I now reside.
If someone does look too closely, then there is a little telepathic razzle-dazzle: Perfectly normal, what you
see. And a flash of the old smile, fang teeth easily concealed, and the mortal goes his way.
Occasionally I throw up all the disguises; I just go out the way I am. Hair long, a velvet blazer that makes me
think of the olden times, and an emerald ring or two on my right hand. I walk fast right through the downtown
crowds in this lovely corrupt southern city; or stroll slowly along the beaches, breathing the warm southern
breeze, on sands that are as white as the moon.
Nobody stares for more than a second or two. There are too many other inexplicable things around us-
horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you in and then inevitably disenchant you. Back to the predictable and
humdrum. The prince is never going to come, everybody knows that; and maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.
It's the same for the others who have survived with me, and who share this hot and verdant little corner of
the universe-the southeastern tip of the North American continent, the glistering metropolis of Miami, a
happy hunting ground for bloodthirsting immortals if ever there was such a place.
It's good to have them with me, the others; it's crucial, really- and what I always thought I wanted: a grand
coven of the wise, the enduring, the ancient, and the careless young.
But ah, the agony of being anonymous among mortals has never been worse for me, greedy monster that I
am. The soft murmur of preternatural voices can't distract me from it. That taste of mortal recognition was
too seductive-the record albums in the windows, the fans leaping and clapping in front of the stage. Never

2. mind that they didn't really believe I was a vampire; for that moment we were together. They were calling my
name!
Now the record albums are gone, and I will never listen to those songs again. My book remains-along with
Interview with the Vampire-safely disguised as fiction, which is, perhaps, as it should be. I caused enough
trouble, as you will see.
Disaster, that's what I wrought with my little games. The vampire who would have been a hero and a martyr
finally for one moment of pure relevance . . .
You'd think I'd learn something from it, wouldn't you? Well, I did, actually. I really did.
But it's just so painful to shrink back into the shadows-Lestat, the sleek and nameless gangster ghoulie
again creeping up on helpless mortals who know nothing of things like me. So hurtful to be again the
outsider, forever on the fringes, struggling with good and evil in the age-old private hell of body and soul.
In my isolation now I dream of finding some sweet young thing in a moonlighted chamber-one of those
tender teenagers, as they call them now, who read my book and listened to my songs; one of the idealistic
lovelies who wrote me fan letters on scented paper, during that brief period of ill-fated glory, talking of poetry
and the power of illusion, saying she wished I was real; I dream of stealing into her darkened room, where
maybe my book lies on a bedside table, with a pretty velvet marker in it, and I dream of touching her
shoulder and smiling as our eyes meet. "Lestat! I always believed in you. I always knew you would come!"
I clasp her face in both hands as I bend to kiss her. "Yes, darling," I answer, "and you don't know how I need
you, how I love you, how I always have."
Maybe she would find me more charming on account of what's befallen me-the unexpected horror I've seen,
the inevitable pain Pve endured. It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our
colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism
and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.
Please forgive me if I sound bitter.
I don't have any right to be. I started the whole thing; and I got out in one piece, as they say. And so many of
our kind did not. Then there were the mortals who suffered. That part was inexcusable. And surely I shall
always pay for that.
But you see, I still don't really fully understand what happened. I don't know whether or not it was a tragedy,
or merely a meaningless venture. Or whether or not something absolutely magnificent might have been born
of my blundering, something that could have lifted me right out of irrelevance and nightmare and into the
burning light of redemption after all.
I may never know, either. The point is, it's over. And our world-our little private realm-is smaller and darker
and safer than ever. It will never again be what it was.
It's a wonder that I didn't foresee the cataclysm, but then I never really envision the finish of anything that I
start. It's the risk that fascinates, the moment of infinite possibility. It lures me through eternity when all other
charms fail.
After all, I was like that when I was alive two hundred years ago-the restless one, the impatient one, the one
who was always spoiling for love and a good brawl. When I set out for Paris in the 17805 to be an actor, all I
dreamed of were beginnings-the moment each night when the curtain went up.
Maybe the old ones are right. I refer now to the true immortals-the blood drinkers who've survived the
millennia-who say that none of us really changes over time; we only become more fully what we are.
To put it another way, you do get wiser when you live for hundreds of years; but you also have more time to
turn out as badly as your enemies always said you might.

3. And I'm the same devil I always was, the young man who would have center stage, where you can best see
me, and maybe love me. One's no good without the other. And I want so much to amuse you, to enthrall
you, to make you forgive me everything. ... Random moments of secret contact and recognition will never be
enough, I'm afraid. But I'm jumping ahead now, aren't I? If you've read my autobiography then you want to
know what I'm talking about. What was this disaster of which I speak?
Well, let's review, shall we? As I've said, I wrote the book and made the album because I wanted to be
visible, to be seen for what I am, even if only in symbolic terms.
As to the risk that mortals might really catch on, that they might realize I was exactly what I said I was-I was
rather excited by that possibility as well. Let them hunt us down, let them destroy us, that was in a way my
fondest wish. We don't deserve to exist; they ought to kill us. And think of the battles! Ah, fighting those who
really know what I am. But I never really expected such a confrontation; and the rockmusician persona, it
was too marvelous a cover for a fiend like me.
It was my own kind who took me literally, who decided to punish me for what I had done. And of course I'd
counted on that too.
After all, I'd told our history in my autobiography; I'd told our deepest secrets, things I'd been sworn never to
reveal. And I was strutting before the hot lights and the camera lenses. And what if some scientist had
gotten hold of me, or more likely a zealous police officer on a minor traffic violation five minutes before
sunup, and somehow I'd been incarcerated, inspected, identified, and classified-all during the daylight hours
while I lay helpless-to the satisfaction of the worst mortal skeptics worldwide?
Granted, that wasn't very likely. Still isn't. (Though it could be such fun, it really could!)
Yet it was inevitable that my own kind should be infuriated by the risks I was taking, that they would try to
burn me alive, or chop me up in little immortal pieces. Most of the young ones, they were too stupid to
realize how safe we were.
And as the night of the concert approached, I'd found myself dreaming of those battles, too. Such a pleasure
it was going to be to destroy those who were as evil as I was; to cut a swathe through the guilty; to cut down
my own image again and again.
Yet, you know, the sheer joy of being out there, making music, making theater, making magic!-that's what it
was all about in the end. I wanted to be alive, finally. I wanted to be simply human. The mortal actor who'd
gone to Paris two hundred years ago and met death on the boulevard, would have his moment at test.
But to continue with the review-the concert was a success. I had my moment of triumph before fifteen
thousand screaming mortal fans; and two of my greatest immortal loves were there with me-Gabrielle and
Louis-my fledglings, my paramours, from whom I'd been separated for too many dark years.
Before the night was over, we licked the pesty vampires who tried to punish me for what I was doing. But
we'd had an invisible ally in these little skirmishes; our enemies burst into flames before they could do us
harm.
•As morning approached, I was too elated by the whole night Ib take the question of danger seriously. I
ignored Gabrielle's impassioned warnings-too sweet to hold her once again; and I dismissed Louis's dark
suspicions as I always had.
And then the jam, the cliffhanger ...
Just as the sun was rising over Carmel Valley and I was closing my eyes as vampires must do at that
moment, I realized I wasn't alone in my underground lair. It wasn't only the young vampires I'd reached with
my music; my songs had roused from their slumber the very oldest of our kind in the world.
And I found myself in one of those breathtaking instants of risk and possibility. What was to follow? Was I to
die finally, or perhaps to be reborn?
Now, to tell you the full story of what happened after that, I must move back a little in time.

4. I have to begin some ten nights before the fatal concert and I have to let you slip into the minds and hearts
of other beings who were responding to my music and my book in ways of which I knew little or nothing at
the time.
In other words, a lot was going on which I had to reconstruct later. And it is the reconstruction that I offer you
now.
So we will move out of the narrow, lyrical confines of the first person singular; we will jump as a thousand
mortal writers have done into the brains and souls of "many characters." We will gallop into the world of
"third person" and "multiple point of view."
And by the way, when these other characters think or say of me that I am beautiful or irresistible, etc., don't
think I put these words in their heads. I didn't! It's what was told to me after, or what I drew out of their minds
with infallible telepathic power; I wouldn't lie about that or anything else. I can't help being a gorgeous fiend.
It's just the card I drew. The bastard monster who made me what I am picked me on account of my good
looks. That's the long and short of it. And accidents like that occur all the time.
We live in a world of accidents finally, in which only aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can
be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but
the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky-
such brutal beauty is beyond dispute.
Now, be assured: though I am leaving you, I will return with full flair at the appropriate moment. The truth is, I
hate not being the first person narrator all the way through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I don't know
whether I'm the hero or the victim of this tale. But either way, shouldn't I dominate it? I'm the one really
telling it, after all.
Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity must wait. I want you to know what
really took place with us, even if you never believe it. In fiction if nowhere else, I must have a little meaning,
a little coherence, or I will go mad.
So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here ... in my arms.
CONTENTS
PROEM
PART I THE ROAD TO THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
The Legend of the Twins
The Short Happy Life of Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang
The Goddess Pandora
The Story of Daniel, the Devil's Minion, or the Boy from Interview with the Vampire
Khayman, My Khayman
The Story of Jesse, the Great Family, and the Talamasca
PART II ALL HALLOW'S EVE
PART III AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE
Lestat: In the Arms of the Goddess
Marius: Coming Together

5. Lestat: The Queen of Heaven
The Story of the Twins, Part I
Lestat: This Is My Body; This Is My Blood
The Story of the Twins, Part II
Lestat: The Kingdom of Heaven
The Story of the Twins, Conclusion
PART IV THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED
PART V . . . WORLD WITHOUT END, AMEN
PROEM
DECLARATION IN THE FORM OF GRAFFITI
-written in black felt-tip pen on a red wall in the back room of a bar called Dracula's Daughter in San
Francisco-
Children of Darkness Be Advised of the Following:
BOOK ONE: Interview with the Vampire, published in 1976, was a true story. Any one of us could have
written it-an account of becoming what we are, of the misery and the searching. Yet Louis, the two-hundred-
year-old immortal who reveals all, insists on mortal sympathy. Lestat, the villain who gave Louis the Dark
Gift, gave him precious little else in the way of explanations or consolation. Sound familiar? Louis hasn't
given up the search for salvation yet, though even Armand, the oldest immortal he was ever to find, could
tell him nothing of why we are here or who made us. Not very surprising, is it, vampire boys and girls? After
all, there has never been a Baltimore Catechism for vampires.
That is, there wasn't until the publication of:
BOOK Two: The Vampire Lestat, this very week. Subtitle: His "early education and adventures." You don't
believe it? Check with the nearest mortal bookseller. Then go into the nearest record store and ask to see
the album which has only just arrived-also entitled The Vampire Lestat, with predictable modesty. Or if all
else fails, switch on your cable TV, if you don't disdain such things, and wait for one of Lestat's numerous
rock video films which began to air with nauseating frequency only yesterday. You will know Lestat for what
he is immediately. And it may not surprise you to be told that he plans to compound these unprecedented
outrages by appearing "live" on stage in a debut concert in this very city. Yes, on Halloween, you guessed it.
But let us forget for the moment the blatant insanity of his preternatural eyes flashing from every record store
window, or his powerful voice singing out the secret names and stories of the most ancient among us. Why
is he doing all this? What do his songs tell us? It is spelled out in his book. He has given us not only a
catechism but a Bible.
And deep into biblical times we are led to confront our first parents: Enkil and Akasha, rulers of the valley of
the Nile before it was ever called Egypt. Kindly disregard the gobbledygook of how they became the first
bloodsuckers on the face of the earth; it makes only a little more sense than the story of how life formed on
this planet in the first place, or how human fetuses develop from microscopic cells within the wombs of their
mortal mothers. The truth is we are descended from this venerable pair, and like it or no, there is
considerable reason to believe that the primal generator of all our delicious and indispensable powers
resides in one or the other of their ancient bodies. What does this mean? To put it bluntly, if Akasha and
Enkil should ever walk hand in hand into a furnace, we should all burn with them. Crush them to glittering
dust, and we are annihilated.
Ah, but there's hope. The pair haven't moved in over fifty centuries! Yes, that's correct. Except of course that
Lestat claims to have wakened them both by playing a violin at the foot of their shrine. But if we dismiss his

6. extravagant tale that Akasha took him in her arms and shared with him her primal blood, we are left with the
more likely state of affairs, corroborated by stories of old, that the two have not batted an eyelash since
before the fall of the Roman Empire. They've been kept all this time in a nice private crypt by Marius, an
ancient Roman vampire, who certainly knows what's best for all of us. And it was he who told the Vampire
Lestat never to reveal the secret.
Not a very trustworthy confidant, the Vampire Lestat. And what are his motives for the book, the album, the
films, the concert? Quite impossible to know what goes on in the mind of this fiend, except that what he
wants to do he does, with reliable consistency. After all, did he not make a vampire child? And a vampire of
his own mother, Gabrielle, who for years was his loving companion? He may set his sights upon the papacy,
this devil, out of sheer thirst for excitement!
So that's the gist: Loiiis, a wandering philosopher whom none of us can find, has confided our deepest moral
secrets to countless strangers. And Lestat has dared to reveal our history to the world, as he parades his
supernatural endowments before the mortal public.
Now the Question: Why are these two still in existence? Why have we not destroyed them already? Oh, the
danger to us from the great mortal herd is by no means a certainty. The villagers are not yet at the door,
torches in hand, threatening to burn the castle. But the monster is courting a change in mortal perspective.
And though we are too clever to corroborate for the human record his foolish fabrications, the outrage
exceeds all precedent. It cannot go unpunished.
Further observations: If the story the Vampire Lestat has told is true-and there are many who swear it is,
though on what account they cannot tell you-may not the two-thousand-year-old Marius come forward to
punish Lestat's disobedience? Or perhaps the King and Queen, if they have ears to hear, will waken at the
sound of their names carried on radio waves around the planet. What might happen to us all if this should
occur? Shall we prosper under their new reign? Or will they set the time for universal destruction? Whatever
the case, might not the swift destruction of the Vampire Lestat avert it?
The Plan: Destroy the Vampire Lestat and all his cohorts as soon as they dare to show themselves. Destroy
all those who show him allegiance.
A Warning: Inevitably, there are other very old blood with nauseating frequency only yesterday. You will
know Lestat for what he is immediately. And it may not surprise you to be told that he plans to compound
these unprecedented outrages by appearing "live" on stage in a debut concert in this very city. Yes, on
Halloween, you guessed it.
But let us forget for the moment the blatant insanity of his preternatural eyes flashing from every record store
window, or his powerful voice singing out the secret names and stories of the most ancient among us. Why
is he doing all this? What do his songs tell us? It is spelled out in his book. He has given us not only a
catechism but a Bible.
And deep into biblical times we are led to confront our first parents: Enkil and Akasha, rulers of the valley of
the Nile before it was ever called Egypt. Kindly disregard the gobbledygook of how they became the first
bloodsuckers on the face of the earth; it makes only a little more sense than the story of how life formed on
this planet in the first place, or how human fetuses develop from microscopic cells within the wombs of their
mortal mothers. The truth is we are descended from this venerable pair, and like it or no, there is
considerable reason to believe that the primal generator of all our delicious and indispensable powers
resides in one or the other of their ancient bodies. What does this mean? To put it bluntly, if Akasha and
Enkil should ever walk hand in hand into a furnace, we should all burn with them. Crush them to glittering
dust, and we are annihilated.
Ah, but there's hope. The pair haven't moved in over fifty centuries! Yes, that's correct. Except of course that
Lestat claims to have wakened them both by playing a violin at the foot of their shrine. But if we dismiss his
extravagant tale that Akasha took him in her arms and shared with him her primal blood, we are left with the
more likely state of affairs, corroborated by stories of old, that the two have not batted an eyelash since
before the fall of the Roman Empire. They've been kept all this time in a nice private crypt by Marius, an
ancient Roman vampire, who certainly knows what's best for all of us. And it was he who told the Vampire
Lestat never to reveal the secret.

7. Not a very trustworthy confidant, the Vampire Lestat. And what are his motives for the book, the album, the
films, the concert? Quite impossible to know what goes on in the mind of this fiend, except that what he
wants to do he does, with reliable consistency. After all, did he not make a vampire child? And a vampire of
his own mother, Gabrielle, who for years was his loving companion? He may set his sights upon the papacy,
this devil, out of sheer thirst for excitement!
So that's the gist: Louis, a wandering philosopher whom none of us can find, has confided our deepest moral
secrets to countless strangers. And Lestat has dared to reveal our history to the world, as he parades his
supernatural endowments before the mortal public.
Now the Question: Why are these two still in existence? Why have we not destroyed them already? Oh, the
danger to us from the great mortal herd is by no means a certainty. The villagers are not yet at the door,
torches in hand, threatening to burn the castle. But the monster is courting a change in mortal perspective.
And though we are too clever to corroborate for the human record his foolish fabrications, the outrage
exceeds all precedent. It cannot go unpunished.
Further observations: If the story the Vampire Lestat has told is true-and there are many who swear it is,
though on what account they cannot tell you-may not the two-thousand-year-old Marius come forward to
punish Lestat's disobedience? Or perhaps the King and Queen, if they have ears to hear, will waken at the
sound of their names carried on radio waves around the planet. What might happen to us all if this should
occur? Shall we prosper under their new reign? Or will they set the time for universal destruction? Whatever
the case, might not the swift destruction of the Vampire Lestat avert it?
The Plan: Destroy the Vampire Lestat and all his co-'. horts as soon as they dare to show themselves.
Destroy all those who show him allegiance.
A Warning: Inevitably, there are other very old blood drinkers out there. We have all from time to time
glimpsed them, or felt their presence. Lestat's revelations do not shock so much as they rouse some
unconscious awareness within us. And surely with their great powers, these old ones can hear Lestat's
music. What ancient and terrible beings, incited by history, purpose, or mere recognition, might be moving
slowly and inexorably to answer his summons?
Copies of this Declaration have to been sent to every meeting place on the Vampire Connection, and to
coven houses the world over. But you must take heed and spread the word: The Vampire Lestat is to be
destroyed and with him his mother, Gabrielle, his cohorts, Louis and Armand, and any and all immortals who
show him loyalty.
Happy Halloween, vampire boys and girls. We shall see you at the concert. We shall see that the Vampire
Lestat never leaves it.
The blond-haired figure in the red velvet coat read the declaration over again from his comfortable vantage
point in the far corner. His eyes were almost invisible behind his dark tinted glasses and the brim of his gray
hat. He wore gray suede gloves, and his arms were folded over his chest as he leaned back against the high
black wainscoting, one boot heel hooked on the rung of his chair.
"Lestat, you are the damnedest creature!" he whispered under his breath. "You are a brat prince." He gave a
little private laugh. Then he scanned the large shadowy room.
Not unpleasing to him, the intricate black ink mural drawn with such skill, like spiderwebs on the white
plaster wall. He rather enjoyed the ruined castle, the graveyard, the withered tree clawing at the full moon. It
was the cliche reinvented as if it were not a cliche, an artistic gesture he invariably appreciated. Very fine too
was the molded ceiling with its frieze of prancing devils and hags upon broomsticks. And the incense, sweet-
an old Indian mixture which he himself had once burnt in the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept centuries
ago.
Yes, one of the more beautiful of the clandestine meeting places.
Less pleasing were the inhabitants, the scattering of slim white figures who hovered around candles set on
small ebony tables.

8. I Far too many of them for this civilized modern city. And they g knew it. To hunt tonight, they would have to
roam far and wide, and young ones always have to hunt. Young ones have to kill.
They are too hungry to do it any other way. ::•! But they thought only of him just now - who was he, where
had he come from? Was he very old and very strong, and what would he do before he left here? Always the
same questions, though he tried to slip into their "vampire bars" like any vagrant blood drinker, eyes averted,
mind closed. Time to leave their questions unanswered. He had what he wanted, a fix on their intentions.
And Lestat's small audio cassette in his jacket pocket. He would have a tape of the video rock films before
he went home.
He rose to go. And one of the young ones rose also. A stiff jf silence fell, a silence in thoughts as well as
words as he and the jj| young one both approached the door. Only the candle flames moved, throwing their
shimmer on the black tile floor as if it were in water.
"Where do you come from, stranger?" asked the young one |r politely. He couldn't have been more than
twenty when he died, and that could not have been ten years ago. He painted his eyes, waxed his lips,
streaked his hair with barbaric color, as if the preternatural gifts were not enough. How extravagant he
looked, not unlike what he was, a spare and powerful revenant who could with luck survive the millennia.
What had they promised him with their modern jargon? That gfite should know the Bardo, the Astral Plane,
etheric realms, the fiStousic of the spheres, the sound of one hand clapping? :|||: Again he spoke: "Where
do you stand on the Vampire Lestat, and the Declaration?"
"You must forgive me. I'm going now."
But surely you know what Lestat's done," the young one , slipping between him and the door. Now, this was
not good manners.
He studied this brash young male more closely. Should he do something to stir them up? To have them
talking about it for centuries? He couldn't repress a smile. But no. There'd be enough excitement soon,
thanks to his beloved Lestat.
"Let me give you a little piece of advice in response," he said quietly to the young inquisitor. "You cannot
destroy the Vampire Lestat; no one can. But why that is so, I honestly can't tell you."
The young one was caught off guard, and a little insulted.
"But let me ask you a question now," the other continued. "Why this obsession with the Vampire Lestat?
What about the content of his revelations? Have you fledglings no desire to seek Marius, the guardian of
Those Who Must Be Kept? To see for yourselves the Mother and the Father?"
The young one was confused, then gradually scornful. He could not form a clever answer. But the true reply
was plain enough in his soul-in the souls of all those listening and watching. Those Who Must Be Kept might
or might not exist; and Marius perhaps did not exist either. But the Vampire Lestat was real, as real as
anything this callow immortal knew, and the Vampire Lestat was a greedy fiend who risked the secret
prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals.
He almost laughed in the young one's face. Such an insignificant battle. Lestat understood these faithless
times so beautifully, one had to admit it. Yes, he'd told the secrets he'd been warned to keep, but in so
doing, he had betrayed nothing and no one.
"Watch out for the Vampire Lestat," he said to the young one finally with a smile. "There are very few true
immortals walking this earth. He may be one of them."
Then he lifted the young one off his feet and set him down out of the way. And he went out the door into the
tavern proper.
The front room, spacious and opulent with its black velvet hangings and fixtures of lacquered brass, was
packed with noisy mortals. Cinema vampires glared from their gilt frames on satin-lined walls. An organ
poured out the passionate Toccata and Fugue of Bach, beneath a babble of conversation and violent riffs of

9. drunken laughter. He loved the sight of so much exuberant life. He loved even the age-old smell of the malt
and the wine, and the perfume of the cigarettes. And as he made his way to the front, he loved the crush of
the soft fragrant humans against him. He loved the fact that the living took not .the; slightest notice of him.
At last the moist air, the busy early evening pavements of Castro Street. The sky still had a polished silver
gleam. Men and women rushed to and fro to escape the faint slanting rain, to be clotted at the corners,
waiting for great bulbous colored lights to wink and signal.
The speakers of the record store across the street blared Le-stat's voice over the roar of the passing bus,
the hiss of wheels on the wet asphalt:
In my dreams, I hold her still, Angel, lover, Mother. And in my dreams, I kiss her lips, Mistress, Muse,
Daughter.
She gave me life I gave her death My beautiful Marquise.
And on the Devil's Road we walked Two orphans then together.
And does she hear my hymns tonight of Kings and Queens and Ancient truths? Of broken vows and
sorrow?
Or does she climb some distant path where rhyme and song can't find her?
Come back to me, my Gabrielle My Beautiful Marquise. The castle's ruined on the hill The village lost
beneath the snow But you are mine forever.
Was she here already, his mother?
The voice died away in a soft drift of electric notes to be swallowed finally by the random noise around him.
He wandered out into the wet breeze and made his way to the corner. Pretty, the busy little street. The
flower vendor still sold his blooms beneath the awning. The butcher was thronged with after-work shoppers.
Behind the cafe windows, mortals took their evening meals or lingered with their newspapers. Dozens
waited for a downhill bus, and a line had formed across the way before an old motion picture theater.
She was here, Gabrielle. He had a vague yet infallible sense of it.
When he reached the curb, he stood with his back against the iron street lamp, breathing the fresh wind that
came off the mountain. It was a good view of downtown, along the broad straight length of Market Street.
Rather like a boulevard in Paris. And all around the gentle urban slopes covered with cheerful lighted
windows.
Yes, but where was she, precisely? Gabrielle, he whispered. He closed his eyes. He listened. At first there
came the great boundless roar of thousands of voices, image crowding upon image. The whole wide world
threatened to open up, and to swallow him with its ceaseless lamentations. Gabrielle. The thunderous
clamor slowly died away. He caught a glimmer of pain from a mortal passing near. And in a high building on
the hill, a dying woman dreamed of childhood strife as she sat listless at her window. Then in a dim steady
silence, he saw what he wanted to see: Gabrielle, stopped in her tracks. She'd heard his voice. She knew
that she was watched. A tall blond female, hair in a single braid down her back, standing in one of the clean
deserted streets of downtown, not far from him. She wore a khaki jacket and pants, a worn brown sweater.
And a hat not unlike his own that covered her eyes, only a bit of her face visible above her upturned collar.
Now she closed her mind, effectively surrounding herself with an invisible shield. The image vanished.
Yes, here, waiting for her son, Lestat. Why had he ever feared for her-the cold one who fears nothing for
herself, only for Lestat. All right. He was pleased. And Lestat would be also.
But what about the other? Louis, the gentle one, with the black hair and green eyes, whose steps made a
careless sound when he walked, who even whistled to himself in dark streets so that mortals heard him
coming. Louis, where are you?

10. Almost instantly, he saw Louis enter an empty drawing room. He had only just come up the stairs from the
cellar where he had slept by day in a vault behind the wall. He had no awareness at all of anyone watching.
He moved with silky strides across the dusty room, and stood looking down through the soiled glass at the
thick flow of passing cars. Same old house on Divisadero Street. In fact, nothing changed much at all with
this elegant and sensuous creature who had caused such a little tumult with his story in Interview with the
Vampire. Except that now he was waiting for Lestat. He had had troubling dreams; he was fearful for Lestat,
and full of old and unfamiliar longings.
Reluctantly, he let the image go. He had a great affection for that one, Louis. And the affection was not wise
because Louis had a tender, educated soul and none of the dazzling power of Gabrielle or her devilish son.
Yet Louis might survive as long as they, he was sure of that. Curious the kinds of courage which made for
endurance. Maybe it had to do with acceptance. But then how account for Lestat, beaten, scarred, yet risen
again? Lestat who never accepted anything?
They had not found each other yet, Gabrielle and Louis. But it was all right. What was he to do? Bring them
together? The very idea. . . . Besides, Lestat would do that soon enough.
But now he was smiling again. "Lestat, you are the damnedest creature! Yes, a brat prince." Slowly, he
reinvoked every detail of Lestat's face and form. The ice-blue eyes, darkening with laughter; the generous
smile; the way the eyebrows came together in a boyish scowl; the sudden flares of high spirits and
blasphemous humor. Even the catlike poise of the body he could envisage. So uncommon in a man of
muscular build. Such strength, always such strength and such irrepressible optimism.
The fact was, he did not know his own mind about the entire enterprise, only that he was amused and
fascinated. Of course there was no thought of vengeance against Lestat for telling his secrets. And surely
Lestat had counted upon that, but then one never knew. Maybe Lestat truly did not care. He knew no more
than the fools back there in the bar, on that score.
What mattered to him was that for the first time in so many years, he found himself thinking in terms of past
and future; he found himself most keenly aware of the nature of this era. Those Who Must Be Kept were
fiction even to their own children! Long gone were the days when fierce rogue blood drinkers searched for
their shrine and their powerful blood. Nobody believed or even cared any longer!
And there lay the essence of the age; for its mortals were of an even more practical ilk, rejecting at every
turn the miraculous. With unprecedented courage, they had founded their greatest ethical advances
squarely upon the truths embedded in the physical.
Two hundred years since he and Lestat had discussed these very things on an island in the Mediterranean-
the dream of a godless and truly moral world where love of one's fellow man would be the only dogma. A
world in which we do not belong. And now such a world was almost realized. And the Vampire Lestat had
passed into popular art where all the old devils ought to go, and would take with him the whole accused
tribe, including Those Who Must Be Kept, though they might never know it.
It made him smile, the symmetry of it. He found himself not merely in awe but strongly seduced by the whole
idea of what Lestat had done. He could well understand the lure of fame.
Why, it had thrilled him shamelessly to see his own name scrawled on the wall of the bar. He had laughed;
but he had enjoyed the laughter thoroughly.
Leave it to Lestat to construct such an inspiring drama, and that's what it was, all right. Lestat, the boisterous
boulevard actor of the ancien regime, now risen to stardom in this beauteous and innocent era.
But had he been right in his little summation to the fledgling in the bar, that no one could destroy the brat
prince? That was sheer romance. Good advertising. The fact is, any of us can be destroyed... one way or
another. Even Those Who Must Be Kept, surely.
They were weak, of course, those fledgling "Children of Darkness," as they styled themselves. The numbers
did not increase their strength significantly. But what of the older ones? If only Lestat had not used the
names of Mael and Pandora. But were there not blood drinkers older even than that, ones of whom he

11. himself knew nothing? He thought of that warning on the wall: "ancient and terrible beings ... moving slowly
and inexorably to answer his summons."
A frisson startled him; coldness, yet for an instant he thought he saw a jungle-a green, fetid place, full of
unwholesome and smothering warmth. Gone, without explanation, like so many sudden signals and
messages he received. He'd learned long ago to shut out the endless flow of voices and images that his
mental powers enabled him to hear; yet now and then something violent and unexpected, like a sharp cry,
came through.
Whatever, he had been in this city long enough. He did not know that he meant to intervene, no matter what
happened! He was angry with his own sudden warmth of feeling. He wanted to be home now. He had been
away from Those Who Must Be Kept for too long.
But how he loved to watch the energetic human crowd, the clumsy parade of shining traffic. Even the poison
smells of the city he did not mind. They were no worse than the stench of ancient Rome, or Antioch, or
Athens-when piles of human waste fed the flies wherever you looked, and the air reeked of inevitable
disease and hunger. No, he liked the clean pastel-colored cities of California well enough. He could have
lingered forever among their clear-eyed and purposeful inhabitants.
But he must go home. The concert was not for many nights, and he would see Lestat then, if he chose....
How delicious not to know precisely what he might do, any more than others knew, others who didn't even
believe in him!
He crossed Castro Street and went swiftly up the wide pavement of Market. The wind had slackened; the air
was almost warm. He took up a brisk pace, even whistling to himself the way that Louis often did. He felt
good. Human. Then he stopped before the store that sold television sets and radios. Lestat was singing on
each and every screen, both large and small.
He laughed under his breath at the great concert of gesture and movement. The sound was oft", buried in
tiny glowing seeds within the equipment. He'd have to search to receive it. But wasn't there a charm in
merely watching the antics of the yellow-haired brat' prince in merciless silence?
The camera drew back to render the full figure of Lestat who played a violin as if in a void. A starry darkness
now and then enclosed him. Then quite suddenly a pair of doors were opened- it was the old shrine of
Those Who Must Be Kept, quite exactly! And there-Akasha and Enkil, or rather actors made up to play the
part, white-skinned Egyptians with long black silken hair and glittering jewelry.
Of course. Why hadn't he guessed that Lestat would carry it to this vulgar and tantalizing extreme? He leant
forward, listening for the transmission of the sound. He heard the voice of Lestat above the violin:
Akasha! Enkil!
Keep your secrets
Keep your silence
It is a better gift than truth.
And now as the violin player closed his eyes and bore down on his music, Akasha slowly rose from the
throne. The violin fell from Lestat's hands as he saw her; like a dancer, she wrapped her arms around him,
drew him to her, bent to take the blood from him, while pressing his teeth to her own throat.
It was rather better than he had ever imagined-such clever craft. Now the figure of Enkil awakened, rising
and walking like a mechanical doll. Forward he came to take back his Queen. Lestat was thrown down on
the floor of the shrine. And there the film ended. The rescue by Marius was not part of it.
"Ah, so I do not become a television celebrity," he whispered with a faint smile. He went to the entrance of
the darkened store.
The young woman was waiting to let him in. She had the black plastic video cassette in her hand.

12. "All twelve of them,'* she said. Fine dark skin and large drowsy brown eyes. The band of silver around her
wrist caught the light. He found it enticing. She took the money gratefully, without counting it. "They've been
playing them on a dozen channels. I caught them all over, actually. Finished it yesterday afternoon."
"You've served me well," he answered. "I thank you." He produced another thick fold of bills.
"No big thing," she said. She didn't want to take the extra money.
You will.
She took it with a shrug and put it in her pocket.
No big thing. He loved these eloquent modern expressions. He loved the sudden shift of her luscious
breasts as she'd shrugged, and the lithe twist of her hips beneath the coarse denim clothes that made her
seem all the more smooth and fragile. An incandescent flower. As she opened the door for him, he touched
the soft nest of her brown hair. Quite unthinkable to feed upon one who has served you; one so innocent. He
would not do this! Yet he turned her around, his gloved fingers slipping up through her hair to cradle her
head:
"The smallest kiss, my precious one."
Her eyes closed; his teeth pierced the artery instantly and his tongue lapped at the blood. Only a taste. A
tiny flash of heat that burnt itself out in his heart within a second. Then he drew back, his lips resting against
her frail throat. He could feel her pulse. The craving for the full draught was almost more than he could bear.
Sin and atonement. He let her go. He smoothed her soft, springy curls, as he looked into her misted eyes.
Do not remember.
"Good-bye now," she said, smiling.
He stood motionless on the deserted sidewalk. And the thirst, ignored and sullen, gradually died back. He
looked at the cardboard sheath of the video cassette.
"A dozen channels," she had said. "I caught them all over, actually." Now if that was so, his charges had
already seen Lestat, inevitably, on the large screen positioned before them in the shrine. Long ago, he'd set
the satellite dish on the slope above the roof to bring them broadcasts from all the world. A tiny computer
device changed the channel each hour. For years, they'd stared expressionless as the images and colors
shifted before their lifeless eyes. Had there been the slightest flicker when they heard Lestat's voice, or saw
their very own image? Or heard their own names sung as if in a hymn?
Well, he would soon find out. He would play the video cassette for them. He would study their frozen,
gleaming faces for something-anything-besides the mere reflection of the light.
"Ah, Marius, you never despair, do you? You are no better than Lestat, with your foolish dreams."
It was midnight before he reached home.
He shut the steel door against the driving snow, and, standing still for a moment, let the heated air surround
him. The blizzard through which he'd passed had lacerated his face and his ears, even his gloved fingers.
The warmth felt so good.
In the quiet, he listened for the familiar sound of the giant generators, and the faint electronic pulse of the
television set within the shrine many hundreds of feet beneath him. Could that be Lestat singing? Yes.
Undoubtedly, the last mournful words of some other song.
Slowly he peeled off his gloves. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair. He studied the large
entrance hall and the adjacent drawing room for the slightest evidence that anyone else had been here.

13. Of course that was almost an impossibility. He was miles from the nearest outpost of the modern world, in a
great frozen snow-covered waste. But out of force of habit, he always observed everything closely. There
were some who could breach this fortress, if only they knew where it was.
All was well. He stood before the giant aquarium, the great room-sized tank which abutted the south wall. So
carefully he had constructed this thing, of the heaviest glass and the finest equipment. He watched the
schools of multicolored fishes dance past him, then alter their direction instantly and totally in the artificial
gloom. The giant sea kelp swayed from one side to another, a forest caught in a hypnotic rhythm as the
gentle pressure of the aerator drove it this way and that. It never failed to captivate him, to lock him suddenly
to its spectacular monotony. The round black eyes of the fish sent a tremor through him; the high slender
trees of kelp with their tapering yellow leaves thrilled him vaguely; but it was the movement, the constant
movement that was the crux.
Finally he turned away from it, glancing back once into that pure, unconscious, and incidentally beautiful
world.
Yes, all was well here.
Good to be in these warm rooms. Nothing amiss with the soft leather furnishings scattered about the thick
wine-colored carpet. Fireplace piled with wood. Books lining the walls. And there the great bank of electronic
equipment waiting for him to insert Lestat's tape. That's what he wanted to do, settle by the fire and watch
each rock film in sequence. The craft intrigued him as well as the songs themselves, the chemistry of old
and new-how Lestat had used the distortions of media to disguise himself so perfectly as another mortal
rock singer trying to appear a god.
He took off his long gray cloak and threw it on the chair. Why did the whole thing give him such an
unexpected pleasure! Do we all long to blaspheme, to shake our fists in the faces of the gods? Perhaps so.
Centuries ago, in what is now called "ancient Rome," he, the well-mannered boy, had always laughed at the
antics of bad children.
He should go to the shrine before he did anything else, he knew that. Just for a few moments, to make
certain things were as they should be. To check the television, the heat, and all the complex electrical
systems. To place fresh coals and incense in the brazier. It was so easy to maintain a paradise for them
now, with the livid lights that gave the nutrients of the sun to trees and flowers that had never seen the
natural lights of heaven. But the incense, that must be done by hand, as always. And never did he sprinkle it
over the coals that he did not think of the first time he'd ever done it.
Time to take a soft cloth, too, and carefully, respectfully, wipe the dust from the parents-from their hard
unyielding bodies, even- from their lips and their eyes, their cold unblinking eyes. And to think, it had been a
full month. It seemed shameful.
Have you missed me, my beloved Akasha and Enkil? Ah, the old game.
His reason told him, as it always had, that they did not know or care whether he came or went. But his pride
always teased with another possibility. Does not the crazed lunatic locked in the madhouse cell feel
something for the slave who brings it water? Perhaps it wasn't an apt comparison. Certainly not one that was
kind.
Yes, they had moved for Lestat, the brat prince, that was true-Akasha to offer the powerful blood and Enkil
to take vengeance. And Lestat could make his video films about it forever. But had it not merely proved once
and for all that there was no mind left in either of them? Surely no more than an atavistic spark had flared for
an instant; it had been too simple to drive them back to silence and stillness on their barren throne.
Nevertheless, it had embittered him. After all, it had never been his goal to transcend the emotions of a
thinking man, but rather to refine them, reinvent them, enjoy them with an infinitely perfectible
understanding. And he had been tempted at the very moment to turn on Lestat with an all-too-human fury.
Young one, why don't you take Those Who Must Be Kept since they have shown you such remarkable
favor? I should like to be rid of them now. I have only had this burden since the dawn of the Christian era.

14. But in truth that wasn't his finer feeling. Not then, not now. Only a temporary indulgence. Lestat he loved as
he always had. Every realm needs a brat prince. And the silence of the King and Queen was as much a
blessing as a curse, perhaps. Lestat's song had been quite right on that point. But who would ever settle the
question?
Oh, he would go down later with the video cassette and watch for himself, of course. And if there were just
the faintest flicker, the faintest shift in their eternal gaze.
But there you go again.... Lestat makes you young and stupid. Likely to feed on innocence and dream of
cataclysm.
How many times over the ages had such hopes risen, only to leave him wounded, even heartbroken. Years
ago, he had brought them color films of the rising sun, the blue sky, the pyramids of Egypt. Ah, such a
miracle! Before their very eyes the sundrenched waters of the Nile flowed. He himself had wept at the
perfection of illusion. He had even feared the cinematic sun might hurt him, though of course he knew that it
could not. But such had been the caliber of the invention. That he could stand there, watching the sunrise,
as he had not seen it since he was a mortal man.
But Those Who Must Be Kept had gazed on in unbroken indifference, or was it wonder-great
undifferentiated wonder that held the particles of dust in the air to be a source of endless fascination?
Who will ever know? They had lived four thousand years before he was ever born. Perhaps the voices of the
world roared in their brains, so keen was their telepathic hearing; perhaps a billion shifting images blinded
them to all else. Surely such things had almost driven him out of his mind until he'd learned to control them.
It had even occurred to him that he would bring modern medical tools to bear on the matter, that he would
hook electrodes to their very heads to test the patterns of their brains! But it had been too distasteful, the
idea of such callous and ugly instruments. After all, they were his King and his Queen, the Father and
Mother of us all. Under his roof, they had reigned without challenge for two millennia.
One fault he must admit. He had an acid tongue of late in speaking to them. He was no longer the High
Priest when he entered the chamber. No. There was something flippant and sarcastic in his tone, and that
should be beneath him. Maybe it was what they called "the modern temper." How could one live in a world
of rockets to the moon without an intolerable self-consciousness threatening every trivial syllable? And he
had never been oblivious to the century at hand.
Whatever the case, he had to go to the shrine now. And he would purify his thoughts properly. He would not
come with resentment or despair. Later, after he had seen the videos, he would play the tape for them. He
would remain there, watching. But he did not have the stamina for it now.
He entered the steel elevator and pressed the button. The great electronic whine and the sudden loss of
gravity gave him a faint sensuous pleasure. The world of this day and age was full of so many sounds that
had never been heard before. It was quite refreshing. And then there was the lovely ease of plummeting
hundreds of feet in a shaft through solid ice to reach the electrically lighted chambers below.
He opened the door and stepped into the carpeted corridor. It was Lestat again singing within the shrine, a
rapid, more joyful song, his voice battling a thunder of drums and the twisted undulating electronic moans.
But something was not quite right here. Merely looking at the long corridor he sensed it. The sound was too
loud, too clear. The antechambers leading to the shrine were open!
He went to the entrance immediately. The electric doors had been unlocked and thrown back. How could
this be? Only he knew the code for the tiny series of computer buttons. The second pair of doors had been
opened wide as well and so had the third. In fact he could see into the shrine itself, his view blocked by the
white marble wall of the small alcove. The red and blue flicker of the television screen beyond was like the
light of an old gas fireplace.
And Lestat's voice echoed powerfully over the marble walls, the vaulted ceilings.
Kill us, my brothers and sisters The war is on.

15. Understand what you see, When you see me.
He took a slow easy breath. No sound other than the music, which was fading now to be replaced by
characterless mortal chatter. And no outsider here. No, he would have known. No one in his lair. His
instincts told him that for certain.
There was a stab of pain in his chest. He even felt a warmth in his face. How remarkable.
He walked through the marble antechambers and stopped at the door of the alcove. Was he praying? Was
he dreaming? He knew what he would soon see-Those Who Must be Kept-just as they had always been.
And some dismal explanation for the doors, a shorted circuit or a broken fuse, would soon present itself.
Yet he felt not fear suddenly but the raw anticipation of a young mystic on the verge of a vision, that at last
he would see the living Lord, or in his own hands the bloody stigmata.
Calmly, he stepped into the shrine.
For a moment it did not register. He saw what he expected to see, the long room filled with trees and
flowers, and the stone bench that was the throne, and beyond it the large television screen pulsing with eyes
and mouths and unimportant laughter. Then he acknowledged the fact: there was only one figure seated on
the throne; and this figure was almost completely transparent! The violent colors of the distant television
screen were passing right through it!
No, but this is quite out of the question! Marius, look carefully. Even your senses are not infallible. Like a
flustered mortal he put his hands to his head as if to block out all distraction.
He was gazing at the back of Enkil, who, save for his black hair, had become some sort of milky glass statue
through which the colors and the lights moved with faint distortion. Suddenly an uneven burst of light caused
the figure to radiate, to become a source of faint glancing beams.
He shook his head. Not possible. Then he gave himself a little shake all over. "All right, Marius," he
whispered. "Proceed slowly."
But a dozen unformed suspicions were sizzling in his mind. Someone had come, someone older and more
powerful than he, someone who had discovered Those Who Must Be Kept, and done something
unspeakable! And all this was Lestat's doing! Lestat, who had told the world his secret.
His knees were weak. Imagine! He had not felt such mortal debilities in so long that he had utterly forgotten
them. Slowly he removed a linen handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped at the thin layer of blood sweat
that covered his forehead. Then he moved towards the throne, and went round it, until he stood staring
directly at the figure of the King.
Enkil as he had been for two thousand years, the black hair in long tiny plaits, hanging to his shoulders. The
broad gold collar lying against his smooth, hairless chest, the linen of his kilt immaculate with its pressed
pleats, the rings still on his motionless fingers.
But the body itself was glass! And it was utterly hollow! Even the huge shining orbs of the eyes were
transparent, only shadowy circles defining the irises. No, wait. Observe everything. And there, you can see
the bones, turned to the very same substance as the flesh, they are there, and also the fine crazing of veins
and arteries, and something like lungs inside, but it is all transparent now, it is all of the same texture. But
what had been done to him!
And the thing was changing still. Before his very eyes, it was losing its milky cast. It was drying up,
becoming ever more transparent.
Tentatively, he touched it. Not glass at all. A husk.

16. But his careless gesture had upset the thing. The body teetered, then fell over onto the marble tile, its eyes
locked open, its limbs rigid in their former position. It made a sound like the scraping of an insect as it
settled.
Only the hair moved. The soft black hair. But it too was changed. It was breaking into fragments. It was
breaking into tiny shimmering splinters. A cool ventilating current was scattering it like straw. And as the hair
fell away from the throat, he saw two dark puncture wounds in it. Wounds that had not healed as they might
have done because all the healing blood had been drawn out of the thing.
"Who has done this?" He whispered aloud, tightening the fingers of his right fist as if this would keep him
from crying out. Who could have taken every last drop of life from him?
And the thing was dead". There wasn't the slightest doubt of it. And what was revealed by this awful
spectacle?
Our King is destroyed, our Father. And I still live; I breathe. And this can only mean that she contains the
primal power. She was the first, and it has always resided in her. And someone has taken her!
Search the cellar. Search the house. But these were frantic, foolish thoughts. No one had entered here, and
he knew it. Only one creature could have done this deed! Only one creature would have known that such a
thing was finally possible.
He didn't move. He stared at the figure lying on the floor, watching it lose the very last trace of opacity. And
would that he could weep for the thing, for surely someone should. Gone now with all that it had ever known,
all that it had ever witnessed. This too coming to an end. It seemed beyond his ability to accept it.
But he wasn't alone. Someone or something had just come out of the alcove, and he could feel it watching
him.
For one moment-one clearly irrational moment-he kept his eyes on the fallen King. He tried to comprehend
as calmly as he could everything that was occurring around him. The thing was moving towards him now,
without a sound; it was becoming a graceful shadow in the corner of his eye, as it came around the throne
and stood beside him.
He knew who it was, who it had to be, and that it had approached with the natural poise of a living being.
Yet, as he looked up, nothing could prepare him for the moment.
Akasha, standing only three inches away from him. Her skin was white and hard and opaque as it had
always been. Her cheek shone like pearl as she smiled, her dark eyes moist and enlivened as the flesh
puckered ever so slightly around them. They positively glistered with vitality.
Speechless, he stared. He watched as she lifted her jeweled fingers to touch his shoulder. He closed his
eyes, then opened them. Over thousands of years he had spoken to her in so many tongues-prayers, pleas,
complaints, confessions-and now he said not a word. He merely looked at her mobile lips, at the flash of
white fang teeth, and the cold glint of recognition in her eyes, and the soft yielding cleft of the bosom moving
beneath the gold necklace.
"You've served me well," she said. "I thank you." Her voice was low, husky, beautiful. But the intonation, the
words; it was what he'd said hours ago to the girl in the darkened store in the city!
The fingers tightened on his shoulder.
"Ah, Marius," she said, imitating his tone perfectly again, "you never despair, do you? You are no better than
Lestat, with your foolish dreams."
His own words again, spoken to himself on a San Francisco street. She mocked him!
Was this terror? Or was it hatred that he felt-hatred that had lain waiting in him for centuries, mixed with
resentment and weariness, and grief for his human heart, hatred that now boiled to a heat he could never

17. have imagined. He didn't dare move, dare speak. The hate was fresh and astonishing and it had taken full
possession of him and he could do nothing to control it or understand it. All judgment had left him.
But she knew. Of course. She knew everything, every thought, word, deed, that's what she was telling him.
She had always known, everything and anything that she chose to know! And she'd known that the mindless
thing beside her was past defending itself. And this, which should have been a triumphant moment, was
somehow a moment of horror!
She laughed softly as she looked at him. He could not bear the sound of it. He wanted to hurt her. He
wanted to destroy her, all her monstrous children be damned! Let us all perish with her! If he could have
done it, he would have destroyed her!
It seemed she nodded, that she was telling him she understood. The monstrous insult of it. Well, he did not
understand. And in another moment, he would be weeping like a child. Some ghastly error had been made,
some terrible miscarriage of purpose.
"My dear servant," she said, her lips lengthening in a faint bitter smile. "You have never had the power to
stop me."
"What do you want! What do you mean to do!"
"You must forgive me," she said, oh, so politely, just as he had said the very words to the young one in the
back room of the bar. "I'm going now."
He heard the sound before the floor moved, the shriek of tearing metal. He was falling, and the television
screen had blown apart, the glass piercing his flesh like so many tiny daggers. He cried out, like a mortal
man, and this time it was fear. The ice was cracking, roaring, as it came down upon him.
"Akasha!"
He was dropping into a giant crevasse, he was plunging into scalding coldness.
"Akasha!" he cried again.
But she was gone, and he was still falling. Then the broken tumbling ice caught him, surrounded him, and
buried him, as it crushed the bones of his arms, his legs, his face. He felt his blood pouring out against the
searing surface, then freezing. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. And the pain was so intense that he
couldn't bear it. He saw the jungle again, inexplicably for an instant, as he had seen it earlier. The hot fetid
jungle, and something moving through it. Then it was gone. And when he cried out this time, it was to Lestat:
Danger, Lestat, beware. We are all in danger.
Then there was only the cold and the pain, and he was losing consciousness. A dream coming, a lovely
dream of warm sun shining on a grassy clearing. Yes, the blessed sun. The dream had him now. And the
women, how lovely their red hair. But what was it, the thing that was lying there, beneath the wilted leaves,
on the altar?
PART I
THE ROAD TO THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
Tempting to place in coherent collage the bee, the mountain range, the shadow of my hoof-tempting to join
them, enlaced by logical vast & shining molecular thought-thread thru all Substance-Tempting to say I see in
all I see the place where the needle began in the tapestry-but ah, it all looks whole and part- long live the
eyeball and the lucid heart.
-STAN RICE from "Four Days in Another City" Some Lamb (1975)
THE LEGEND OF THE TWINS
Tell it in rhythmic continuity.
Detail by detail the living creatures.

18. Tell it as must, the rhythm solid in the shape.
Woman. Arms lifted. Shadow eater.
-STAN RICE from "Elegy" Whiteboy (1976)
"CALL HER FOR ME," HE SAID. "TELL HER I HAVE had the strangest dreams, that they were about the
twins. You must call her!" His daughter didn't want to do it. She watched him fumble with the book. His
hands were his enemies now, he often said. At ninety-one, he. could scarcely hold a pencil or turn a page.
"Daddy," she said, "that woman's probably dead." Everybody he had known was dead. He'd outlived his
colleagues; he'd outlived his brothers and sisters, and even two of his children. In a tragic way, he had
outlived the twins, because no one read his book now. No one cared about "the legend of the twins."
"No, you call her," he said. "You must call her. You tell her that I dreamed of the twins. I saw them in the
dream."
"Why would she want to know that, Daddy?"
His daughter took the little address book and paged through it slowly. Dead all these people, long dead. The
men who had worked with her father on so many expeditions, the editors and photographers who had
worked with him on his book. Even his enemies who had said his life was wasted, that his research had
come to nothing; even the most scurrilous, who had accused him of doctoring pictures and lying about the
caves, which her father had never done.
Why should she be still alive, the woman who had financed his long-ago expeditions, the rich woman who
had sent so much money for so many years?
"You must ask her to come! Tell her it's very important. I must describe to her what I've seen."
To come? All the way to Rio de Janeiro because an old man had had strange dreams? His daughter found
the page, and yes, there was the name and the number. And the date beside it, only two years old.
"She lives in Bangkok, Daddy." What time was it in Bangkok? She had no idea.
"She'll come to me. I know she will."
He closed his eyes and settled back onto the pillow. He was small now, shrunken. But when he opened his
eyes, there was her father looking at her, in spite of the shriveling yellowed skin, the dark spots on the backs
of his wrinkled hands, the bald head.
He appeared to be listening to the music now, the soft singing of the Vampire Lestat, coming from her room.
She would turn it down if it kept him awake. She wasn't much for American rock singers, but this one she'd
rather liked. >
"Tell her I must speak to her!" he said suddenly, as though coming back to himself.
"All right, Daddy, if you want me to." She turned off the lamp by the bed. "You go back to sleep."
"Don't give up till you find her. Tell her... the twins! I've seen the twins."
But as she was leaving, he called her back again with one of those sudden moans that always frightened
her. In the light from the hall, she could see he was pointing to the books on the far wall.
"Get it for me," he said. He was struggling to sit up again.
"The book, Daddy?"
"The twins, the pictures . . ."
She took down the old volume and brought it to him and put it in his lap. She propped the pillows up higher
for him and turned on the lamp again.

19. It hurt her to feel how light he was as she lifted him; it hurt her to see him struggle to put on his silver-rimmed
glasses. He took the pencil in hand, to read with it, ready to write, as he had always done, but then he let it
fall and she caught it and put it back on the table.
"You go call her!" he said.
She nodded. But she stayed there, just in case he needed her. The music from her study was louder now,
one of the more metallic and raucous songs. But he didn't seem to notice. Very gently she opened the book
for him, and turned to the first pair of color pictures, one filling the left page, the other the right.
How well she knew these pictures, how well she remembered as a little girl making the long climb with him
to the cave on Mount Carmel, where he had led her into the dry dusty darkness, his flashlight lifted to reveal
the painted carvings on the wall.
"There, the two figures, you see them, the red-haired women?"
It had been difficult at first to make out the crude stick figures in the dim beam of the flashlight. So much
easier later to study what the close-up camera so beautifully revealed.
But she would never forget that first day, when he had shown her each small drawing in sequence: the twins
dancing in rain that fell in tiny dashes from a scribble of cloud; the twins kneeling on either side of the altar
upon which a body lay as if in sleep or death; the twins taken prisoner and standing before a tribunal of
scowling figures; the twins running away. And then the damaged pictures of which nothing could be
recovered; and finally the one twin alone weeping, her tears falling in tiny dashes, like the rain, from eyes
that were tiny black dashes too.
They'd been carved in the rock, with pigments added-orange for the hair, white chalk for the garments,
green for the plants that grew around them, and even blue for the sky over their heads. Six thousand years
had passed since they had been created in the deep darkness of the cave.
And no less old were the near identical carvings, in a shallow rock chamber high on the slope of Huayna
Picchu, on the other side of the world.
She had made that journey also with her father, a year later, across the Urubamba River and up through the
jungles of Peru. She'd seen for herself the same two women in a style remarkably similar though not the
same.
There again on the smooth wall were the same scenes of the rain falling, of the red-haired twins in their
joyful dance. And then the somber altar scene in loving detail. It was the body of a woman lying on the altar,
and in their hands the twins held two tiny, carefully drawn plates. Soldiers bore down upon the ceremony
with swords uplifted. The twins were taken into bondage, weeping. And then came the hostile tribunal and
the familiar escape. In another picture, faint but still discernible, the twins held an infant between them, a
small bundle with dots for eyes and the barest bit of red hair; then to others they entrusted their treasure as
once more the menacing soldiers appeared.
And lastly, the one twin, amid the full leafy trees of the jungle, her arms out as if reaching for her sister, the
red pigment of her hair stuck to the stone wall with dried blood.
How well she could recall her excitement. She had shared her father's ecstasy, that he had found the twins a
world apart from each other, in these ancient pictures, buried in the mountain caves of Palestine and Peru.
It seemed the greatest event in history; nothing could have been so important. Then a year later a vase had
been discovered in a Berlin museum that bore the very same figures, kneeling, plates in hand before the
stone bier. A crude thing it was, without documentation. But what did that matter? It had been dated 4000
B.C. by the most reliable methods, and there unmistakably, in the newly translated language of ancient
Sumer, were the words that meant so much to all of them:
"The Legend of the Twins"
Yes, so terribly significant, it had all seemed. The foundation of a life's work, until he presented his research.

20. They'd laughed at him. Or ignored him. Not believable, such a link between the Old World and the New. Six
thousand years old, indeed! They'd relegated him to the "crazy camp" along with those who talked of ancient
astronauts, Atlantis, and the lost kingdom of Mu.
How he'd argued, lectured, begged them to believe, to journey with him to the caves, to see for themselves!
How he'd laid out the specimens of pigment, the lab reports, the detailed studies of the plants in the carvings
and even the white robes of the twins.
Another man might have given it up. Every university and foundation had turned him away. He had no
money even to care for his children. He took a teaching position for bread and butter, and, in the evenings,
wrote letters to museums all over the world. And a clay tablet, covered with drawings, was found in
Manchester, and another in London, both clearly depicting the twins! On borrowed money he journeyed to
photograph these artifacts. He wrote papers on them for obscure publications. He continued his search.
Then she had come, the quiet-spoken and eccentric woman who had listened to him, looked at his
materials, and then given him an ancient papyrus, found early in this century in a cave in Upper Egypt,
which contained some of the very same pictures, and the words "The Legend of the Twins."
"A gift for you," she'd said. And then she'd bought the vase for him from the museum in Berlin. She obtained
the tablets from England as well.
But it was the Peruvian discovery that fascinated her most of all. She gave him unlimited sums of money to
go back to South America and continue his work.
For years he'd searched cave after cave for more evidence, spoken to villagers about their oldest myths and
stories, examined ruined cities, temples, even old Christian churches for stones taken from pagan shrines.
But decades passed and he found nothing.
It had been the ruin of him finally. Even she, his patron, had told him to give it up. She did not want to see
his life spent on this. He should leave it now to younger men. But he would not listen. This was his
discovery! The Legend of the Twins! And so she wrote the checks for him, and he went on until he was too
old to climb the mountains and hack his way through the jungle anymore.
In the last years, he lectured only now and then. He could not interest the new students in this mystery, even
when he showed the papyrus, the vase, the tablets. After all, these items did not fit anywhere really, they
were of no definable period. And the caves, could anyone have found them now?
But she had been loyal, his patron. She'd bought him this house in Rio, created a trust for him which would
come to his daughter when he died. Her money had paid for his daughter's education, for so many other
things. Strange that they lived in such comfort. It was as if he had been successful after all.
"Call her," he said again. He was becoming agitated, empty hands scraping at the photographs. After all, his
daughter had not moved. She stood at his shoulder looking down at the pictures, at the figures of the twins.
"All right, Father." She left him with his book.
It was late afternoon the next day when his daughter came in to kiss him. The nurse said that he'd been
crying like a child. He opened his eyes as his daughter squeezed his hand.
"I know now what they did to them," he said. "I've seen it! It was sacrilege what they did."
His daughter tried to quiet him. She told him that she had called the woman. The woman was on her way.
"She wasn't in Bangkok, Daddy. She's moved to Burma, to Rangoon. But I reached her there, and she was
so glad to hear from you. She said she'd leave within a few hours. She wants to know about the dreams."
He was so happy. She was coming. He closed his eyes and turned his head into the pillow. "The dreams will
start again, after dark," he whispered. "The whole tragedy will start again."

21. "Daddy, rest," she said. "Until she comes."
Sometime during the night he died. When his daughter came in, he was already cold. The nurse was waiting
for her instructions. He had the dull, half-lidded stare of dead people. His pencil was lying on the coverlet,
and there was a piece of paper-the flyleaf of his precious book-crumpled under his right hand.
She didn't cry. For a moment she didn't do anything. She remembered the cave in Palestine, the lantern.
"Do you see? The two women?"
Gently, she closed his eyes, and kissed his forehead. He'd written something on the piece of paper. She
lifted his cold, stiff fingers and removed the paper and read the few words he'd scrawled in his uneven
spidery hand:
"IN THE JUNGLES-WALKING."
What could it mean?
And it was too late to reach the woman now. She would probably arrive sometime that evening. All that long
way. . . .
Well, she would give her the paper, if it mattered, and tell her the things he'd said about the twins.
THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE
OF BABY JENKS AND THE FANG GANG
The Murder Burger is served right here. You need not wait at the gate of Heaven for unleavened death. You
can be a goner on this very corner.
Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh. If you wish to eat it you must feed it. "Yall come back." "You bet."
STAN RICE - from "Texas Suite" Some Lamb (1975)
BABY JENKS PUSHED HER HARLEY TO SEVENTY miles an hour, the wind freezing her naked white
hands. She'd been fourteen last summer when they'd done it to her, made her one of the Dead, and "dead
weight" she was eighty-five pounds max. She hadn't combed out her hair since it happened-didn't have to-
and her two little blond braids were swept back by the wind, off the shoulders of her black leather jacket.
Bent forward, scowling with her little pouting mouth turned down, she looked mean, and deceptively cute.
Her big blue eyes were vacant.
The rock music of The Vampire Lestat was blaring through her earphones, so she felt nothing but the
vibration of the giant motorcycle under her, and the mad lonesomeness she had known all the way from Gun
Barrel City five nights ago. And there was a dream that was bothering her, a dream she kept having every
night right before she opened her eyes.
She'd see these redheaded twins in the dream, these two pretty ladies, and then all these terrible things
would go down. No, she didn't like it one damn bit and she was so lonely she was going out of her head.
The Fang Gang hadn't met her south of Dallas as they had promised. She had waited two nights by the
graveyard, then she had known that something was really, really wrong. They would never have headed out
to California without her. They were going to see the Vampire Lestat on stage in San Francisco, but they'd
had plenty of time. No, something was wrong. She knew it.
Even when she had been alive, Baby Jenks could feel things like that. And now that she was Dead it was
ten times what it had been then. She knew the Fang Gang was in deep trouble. Killer and Davis would never
have dumped her. Killer said he loved her. Why the hell else would he have ever made her, if he didn't love
her? She would have died in Detroit if it hadn't been for Killer.
She'd been bleeding to death, the doctor had done it to her all right, the baby was gone and all, but she was
going to die too, he'd cut something in there, and she was so high on heroin she didn't give a damn. And

22. then that funny thing happened. Floating up to the ceiling and looking down at her body! And it wasn't the
drugs either. Seemed to her like a whole lot of other things were about to happen.
But down there, Killer had come into the room and from up where she was floating she could see that he
was a Dead guy. Course she didn't know what he called himself then. She just knew he wasn't alive.
Otherwise he just looked kind of ordinary. Black jeans, black hair, real deep black eyes. He had "Fang
Gang" written on the back of his leather jacket. He'd sat down on the bed by her body and bent over it.
"Ain't you cute, little girl!" he'd said. Same damn thing the pimp had said to her when he made her braid her
hair and put plastic barrettes in it before she went out on the street.
Then whoom! She was back in her body all right, and she was just full of something warmer and better than
horse and she heard him say: "You're not going to die, Baby Jenks, not ever!" She had her teeth in his
goddamn neck, and boy, was that heaven!
But the never dying part? She wasn't so sure now.
Before she'd lit out of Dallas, giving up on the Fang Gang for good, she'd seen the coven house on Swiss
Avenue burnt to timbers. All the glass blown out of the windows. It had been the same in Oklahoma City.
What the hell had happened to all those Dead guys in those houses? And they were the big city
bloodsuckers, too, the smart ones that called themselves vampires.
How she'd laughed when Killer and Davis had told her that, that those Dead guys went around in three-piece
suits and listened to classical music and called themselves vampires. Baby Jenks could have laughed
herself to death. Davis thought it was pretty funny too, but Killer just kept warning her about them. Stay away
from them.
Killer and Davis, and Tim and Russ, had taken her by the Swiss Avenue coven house just before she left
them to go to Gun Barrel City.
"You got to always know where it is," Davis had said. "Then stay away from it."
They'd showed her the coven houses in every big city they hit. But it was when they showed her the first one
in St. Louis that they'd told her the whole story.
She'd been real happy with the Fang Gang since they left Detroit, feeding off the men they lured out of the
roadside beer joints. Tim and Russ were OK guys, but Killer and Davis were her special friends and they
were the leaders of the Fang Gang.
Now and then they'd gone into town and found some little shack of a place, all deserted, with maybe two
bums in there or something, men who looked kinda like her dad, wearing bill caps and with real calloused
hands from the work they did. And they'd have a feast in there on those guys. You could always live off that
kind, Killer told her, because nobody gives a damn what happens to them. They'd strike fast, kachoom!-
drinking the blood quick, draining them right down to the last heartbeat. It wasn't fun to torture people like
that, Killer said. You had to feel sorry for them. You did what you did, then you burnt down the shack, or you
took them outside and dug a hole real deep and stuck them down there. And if you couldn't do anything like
that to cover it up, you did this little trick: cut your finger, let your Dead blood run over the bite where you'd
sucked them dry, and look at that, the little puncture wounds just like to vanished. Flash! Nobody'd ever
figure it out; it looked like stroke or heart attack.
Baby Jenks had been having a ball. She could handle a full-sized Harley, carry a dead body with one arm,
leap over the hood of a car, it was fantastic. And she hadn't had the damn dream then, the dream that had
started up in Gun Barrel City-with those redheaded twins and that woman's body lying on an altar. What
were they doing?
j What would she do now if she couldn't find the Fang Gang? Out in California the Vampire Lestat was
going on stage two ' nights from now. And every Dead guy in creation would be there, leastways that's how
she figured it, and that's how the Fang Gang had figured it and they were all supposed to be together. So
what the hell was she doing lost from the Fang Gang and headed for a jerkwater city like St. Louis?

23. All she wanted was for everything to be like it had been before, goddamn it. Oh, the blood was good, yum,
it was so good, even now that she was alone and had to work up her nerve, the way it had been this
evening, to pull into a gas station and lure the old guy out back. Oh, yeah, snap, when she'd gotten her
hands on his neck, and the blood came, it had been just fine, it was hamburgers and french fries and
strawberry shakes, it was beer and chocolate sundaes. It was mainline, and coke and hash. It was better
than screwing! It was all of it.
But everything had been better when the Fang Gang was with her. And they had understood when she got
tired of the chewed-up old guys and said she wanted to taste something young and tender. No problem.
Hey, it was a nice little runaway kid she needed, Killer said. Just close your eyes and wish. And sure
enough, like that, they found him hitchhiking on the main road, just five miles out of some town in northern
Missouri, name of Parker. Real pretty boy with long shaggy black hair, just twelve years old, but real tall for
his age, with some beard on his chin, and trying to pass for sixteen. He'd climbed on her bike and they'd
taken him into the woods. Then Baby Jenks laid down with him, real gentle like, and slurp, that was it for
Parker.
It was delicious all right, juicy was the word. But she didn't know really whether it was any better than the
mean old guys when you got down to it. And with them it was more sport. Good ole boy blood, Davis called
it.
Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy, as Baby Jenks saw it. His skin
had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were
standing in a fluorescent light all the time. Davis had beautiful eyelashes too, just damn near unbelievably
long and thick, and he decked himself out in all the gold he could find. He stole the gold rings and watches
and chains and things off the victims.
Davis loved to dance. They all loved to dance. But Davis could outdance any of them. They'd go to the
graveyards to dance, maybe round three a.m., after they'd all fed and buried the dead and all that jazz.
They'd set the ghetto blaster radio on a tombstone and turn it way up, with the Vampire Lestat roaring. "The
Grand Sabbat" song, that was the one that was good for dancing. And oh, man, how good it felt, twisting and
turning and leaping in the air, or just watching Davis move and Killer move and Russ spinning in circles till
he fell down. Now that was real Dead guy dancing.
Now if those big city bloodsuckers weren't hip to that, they were crazy.
God, she wished now that she could tell Davis about this dream she'd been having since Gun Barrel City.
How it had come to her in her mom's trailer, zap, the first time when she'd been sitting waiting. It was so
clear for a dream, those two women with the red hair, and the body lying there with its skin all black and
crackled like. And what the hell was that on the plates in the dream? Yeah, it had been a heart on one plate
and a brain on the other. Christ. All those people kneeling around that body and those plates. It was creepy.
And she'd had it over and over again since then. Why, she was having it every goddamn time she shut her
eyes and again right before she dug her way out of wherever she'd been hiding by daylight.
Killer and Davis would understand. They'd know if it meant something. They wanted to teach her everything.
When they first hit St. Louis on their way south, the Fang Gang had headed off the boulevard into one of
those big dark streets with iron gates that they call "a private place" in St. Louis. It was the Central West End
down here, they said. Baby Jenks had liked those big trees. There just aren't enough big trees in south
Texas. There wasn't much of nothing in south Texas. And here the trees were so big their branches made a
roof over your head. And the streets were full of noisy rustling leaves and the houses were big, with peaked
roofs and the lights buried deep inside them. The coven house was made of brick and had what Killer called
Moorish arches.
"Don't go any closer," Davis had said. Killer just laughed. Killer wasn't scared of the big city Dead. Killer had
been made sixty years ago, he was old. He knew everything.
"But they will try to hurt you, Baby Jenks," he said, walking his Harley just a little farther up the street. He
had a lean long face, wore a gold earring in his ear, and his eyes were small, kind of thoughtful. "See, this
one's an old coven, been in St. Louis since the turn of the century."

24. "But why would they want to hurt us?" Baby Jenks had asked. She was real curious about that house. What
did the Dead do who lived in houses? What kind of furniture did they have? Who paid the bills, for God's
sakes?
Seems like she could see a chandelier in one of those front rooms, through the curtains. A big fancy
chandelier. Man! Now that's living.
"Oh, they got all that down," said Davis, reading her mind. "You don't think the neighbors think they're real
people? Look at that car in the drive, you know what that is? That's a Bugatti, baby. And the other one
beside it, a Mercedes-Benz."
What the hell was wrong with a pink Cadillac? That's what she'd like to have, a big gas-guzzling convertible
that she could push to a hundred and twenty on the open stretch. And that's what had got her into trouble,
got her to Detroit, an asshole with a Cadillac convertible. But just 'cause you were Dead didn't mean you had
to drive a Harley and sleep in the dirt every day, did it?
"We're free, darlin'," Davis said, reading her thoughts. "Don't you see? There's a lotta baggage goes with
this big city life. Tell her, Killer. And you ain't getting me in no house like that, sleeping in a box under the
floorboards."
He broke up. Killer broke up. She broke up too. But what the hell was it like in there? Did they turn on the
late show and watch the vampire movies? Davis was really rolling on the ground.
"The fact is, Baby Jenks," Killer said, "we're rogues to them, they wanna run everything. Like they don't think
we have a right to be Dead. Like when they make a new vampire as they call it, it's a big ceremony."
"Like what happens, like a wedding or something you mean?"
More laughter from those two.
"Not exactly," Killer said, "more like a funeral!"
They were making too much noise. Surely those Dead guys in the house were going to hear them. But Baby
Jenks wasn't afraid if Killer wasn't afraid. Where were Russ and Tim, gone off hunting?
"But the point is, Baby Jenks," said Killer, "they have all these rules, and I'll tell you what, they're spreading it
all over that they're going to get the Vampire Lestat the night of his concert, but you know what, they're
reading his book like it was the Bible.
They're using all that language he used, Dark Gift, Dark Trick, I tell you it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen,
they're going to burn the guy at the stake and then use his book like it was Emily Post or Miss Manners-"
"They'll never get Lestat," Davis had sneered. "No way, man. You can't kill the Vampire Lestat, that is flat out
impossible. It has been tried, you see, and it has failed. Now that is one cat who is utterly and completely
immortal."
"Hell, they're going out there same as we are," Killer said, "to join up with the cat if he wants us."
Baby Jenks didn't understand the whole thing. She didn't know who Emily Post was or Miss Manners either.
And weren't we all supposed to be immortal? And why would the Vampire Lestat want to be running around
with the Fang Gang? I mean he was a rock star, for Chrissakes. Probably had his own limousine. And was
he ever one adorable-looking guy, Dead or alive! Blond hair to die for and a smile that just made you wanna
roll over and let him bite your goddamn neck!
She'd tried to read the Vampire Lestat's book-the whole history of Dead guys back to ancient times and all-
but there were just too many big words and konk, she was asleep.
Killer and Davis said she'd find out she could read real fast now if she just stuck with it. They carried copies
of Lestat's book around with them, and the first one, the one with the title she could never get straight,
something like "conversations with the vampire," or "talking with the vampire," or "getting to meet the

25. vampire," or something like that. Davis would read out loud from that one sometimes, but Baby Jenks
couldn't take it in, snore! The Dead Guy, Louis, or whoever he was, had been made Dead down in New
Orleans and the book was full of stuff about banana leaves and iron railings and Spanish moss.
"Baby Jenks, they know everything, the old European ones," Davis had said. "They know how it started, they
know we can go on and on if we hang in there, live to be a thousand years old and turn into white marble."
"Gee, that's just great, Davis," Baby Jenks said. "It's bad enough now not being able to walk into a Seven
Eleven under those lights without people looking at you. Who wants to look like white marble?"
"Baby Jenks, you don't need anything anymore from the Seven Eleven," Davis said real calmly. But he got
the point.
Forget the books. Baby Jenks did love the Vampire Lestat's music, and those songs just kept giving her a
lot, especially that one about Those Who Must Be Kept-the Egyptian King and Queen-though to tell the truth
she didn't know what the hell it meant till Killer explained.
"They're the parents of all vampires, Baby Jenks, the Mother and the Father. See, we're all an unbroken line
of blood coming down from the King and the Queen in ancient Egypt who are called Those Who Must Be
Kept. And the reason you gotta keep them is if you destroy them, you destroy all of us, too."
Sounded like a bunch of bull to her.
"Lestat's seen the Mother and the Father," Davis said. "Found them hidden on a Greek island, so he knows
that it's the truth. That's what he's been telling everybody with these songs-and it's the truth."
"And the Mother and the Father don't move or speak or drink blood, Baby Jenks," Killer said. He looked real
thoughtful, sad, almost. "They just sit there and stare like they've done for thousands of years. Nobody
knows what those two know."
"Probably nothing," Baby Jenks had said disgustedly. "And I tell you, this is some kind of being immortal!
What do you mean the big city Dead guys can kill us? Just how can they manage that?"
"Fire and sun can always do it," Killer answered just a touch impatient. "I told you that. Now mind me,
please. You can always fight the big city Dead guys. You're tough. Fact is, the big city Dead are as scared of
you as you will ever be of them. You just beat it when you see a Dead guy you don't know. That's a rule
that's followed by everybody who's Dead."
After they'd left the coven house, she'd got another big surprise from Killer: he'd told her about the vampire
bars. Big fancy places in New York and San Francisco and New Orleans, where the Dead guys met in the
back rooms while the damn fool human beings drank and danced up front. In there, no other Dead guy could
kill you, city slicker, European, or rogue like her.
"You run for one of those places," he told her, "if the big city Dead guys ever get on your case."
"I'm not old enough to go in a bar," Baby Jenks said.
That really did it. He and Davis laughed themselves sick. They were falling off their motorcycles.
"You find a vampire bar, Baby Jenks," Killer said, "you just give them the Evil Eye and say 'Let me in.'"
Yeah, she'd done that Evil Eye on people and made them do stuff, it worked OK. And truth was, they'd never
seen the vampire bars. Just heard about them. Didn't know where they were. She'd had lots of questions
when they finally left St. Louis.
But as she made her way north towards the same city now, the only thing in the world she cared about was
getting to that same damned coven house. Big city Dead guys, here I come. She'd go clean out of her head
if she had to go on alone.